2008 Financial Crisis Due to Ostrich-like Democrats

Prior to the derivative meltdown, the Democrats were saying that there is no problem in the mortgage market while the Republicans were saying there was.  So much for the double talk I heard from the president of the Labor Management Relations Association meeting earlier this month.  Academia has become so politicized that instead of talking about workplace issues, the president's speech revolved around a partisan pro-Democratic interpretation of the financial crisis.

Sustainability Is a Conservative Ideology

The totalitarian left has long disingenuously misapplied words such as liberal, progressive, democratic and rights.  Liberal means a supporter of freedom, but the left uses it to mean a supporter of authoritarian state control.  Progressive means support for progress, but the left uses it to mean advocacy of policies that squelch progress. Democratic means popular power but the left uses it to mean elite power, especially its own.  Rights imply legal protection from violence, but the left uses it to mean the violent attainment of ends of which it approves.

The latest term that the the totalitarian left has corrupted is sustainability.  Dictionary.com, defines to sustain as to support or bear the weight of; to keep from giving way; to keep up or keep going, as an action or process; and in a number of other ways.  The notion of to keep up or keep going means the same as conserving, which is defined as preventing decay, waste or loss and using natural resources wisely, preserving or saving, as in conserving the woodlands.

The earliest version of environmentalism was called conservation, a term linked to sustainability.  Only fools would fail to conserve resources but to make such conservation or sustainability the main point is niggardly.  The main point is liberty, on which American culture is based. Liberty may imply conservation or conservatism but more often it has implied improvement, change and progress.  Most Americans have come to enjoy the fruit of the experimentation to which liberty has led. Experimentation led to material and spiritual progress, not to conservativsm, reaction and sustainability.

At its heart, the left has always been a conservative movement. It aims to reinstate the tribalism of ancient times and, in the context of today's global society, to do so through  re-institution of the medieval world:  a global secular church, the United Nations; a federal Empire; a banking aristocracy;  and an academic priesthood.  The left's reactionary faith is not humanism but sustainability.  Human beings are the problem and their eradication, their murder, is its ultimate goal.  

Liberty and experimentation lead to discovery.   The innovation of new technology permits humanity to improve its standard of living as it uses resources.  Discovery permits humanity to make use of new resources in new ways.  Human beings do not need to fear scarcity so long as they are free to improve their lives, especially in the context of markets that allocate resources so that they are distributed among their best uses.  But if liberty is curtailed, as has occurred here since 1908, experimentation is reduced and progress stalls.


We can do better than sustainability.  Sustainability is for the hunting grounds of kings and princes; the backwaters of pre-industrial and ancient societies; for the frontier of 14th century Europe.  A nation based on freedom thinks in terms of improvement, progress and growth.  It is surely a sign that Progressivism has finally failed that its admitted aim is sustainability and conservation, not progress.

Key to Sustainability: Kick the UN out of the US and Get the US out of the UN

Glenda R. McGee sent me a Daily Caller blog about the UN's crackpot Agenda 21, which has caught on in a wide range of US governmental bodies ranging from county environmental departments to the Obama administration. Daily Caller's Jim Simpson points out that the terminology that the radical left and the UN have adopted, such as "sustainability", are code for radical social reorganization along Spartan lines (the Spartans had the kind of collectivist, highly controlled society that today's left advocates, with the Obama-Emanuel youth training movement very much in the Spartan communistic tradition).  Daily Caller does a good job of dissecting the code, much of which amounts to fear and loathing of freedom, human happiness and economic progress.  Given the environmental movement's staunch opposition to progress and technology, claiming that it is "progressive" is perhaps a worse abuse of language than calling authoritarian left-wingers "liberals."

The notion of "sustainability" is vacuous.  A way of life is sustainable if the participants conceive of a way of sustaining it.  Technology has proven remarkably inventive not in sustaining but in expanding standards of living. Such expansion has been stalled by the kinds of policies the environmentalists advocate.The chief enemies to sustainability are regulation, government, the Federal Reserve Bank, the United Nations, and authoritarian environmentalism.

As Simpson's article makes clear, UN Agenda 21's land control theme is a form of totalitarian communism that is more radical than Stalin's and Mao's. Environmentalism is a violent totalitarian movement very much in these extremist traditions.  Which is not to say that the environment is not an important concern.  The rule of law and private property are much better at maintaining the environment optimally than regulation and social reorganization.

It is frightening that the United Nations, which was founded on the premise that it would contribute to world peace, has become an organization that advocates human resettlement and mass murder.  It is time for the United States to rethink its involvement in the United Nations.  There is a place for a multilateral peace organization, but not for initiatives like UN Agenda 21 and the reactionary environmental movement.  The UN should be kicked out of the US, and the US needs to resign from the UN.

The New Health Care Law Will Impoverish You: Here's Why

I just submitted this to Mike Marnell, crusading editor of the Lincoln Eagle out of Kingston, NY.

The New Health Care Law Will Impoverish You: Here's Why

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.*

In the 1990s the Clinton administration and the left wingers who dominate the Democratic Party pushed through the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).  Democrats claimed that it would improve efficiency and reduce costs because employers would no longer terminate employees on sick leave and so save on costs arising from turnover.  For instance, the University of California's Andrew E. Scharlach and Blanche Grosswald  claimed in Social Service Review that FMLA provided so great a bounty to employers that it ought to be expanded to include the smallest firms, which can be bankrupted by increases in employment costs.   As well, the University of North Carolina's Christopher Ruhm claimed in the Journal of Economic Perspectives that FMLA's costs would be minimal and that it might contribute to increasing efficiency because employers without the benefit of government regulation overlooked employees' needs for family and medical leave.

After FMLA passed, Scharlach's, Grosswald's and Ruhm's claims turned out to be pap.  Hallmark Cards reported that FMLA increased its leave costs by 35%.  Southwest Airlines, the best run (and most union-friendly) airline stated that reservation agents were gaming leave provisions to get extra overtime.  Southwest added that "FMLA has forced employers to abandon their attendance reward policies… once an employee claims that his or her absence was an FMLA covered absence, it cannot be considered in determining whether the employee is eligible for a perfect attendance award."  

Worse, FMLA led to litigation. The Department of Labor held that employees in intense, assembly-line and service environments must be given leaves of as little as six minutes.  Because some employer processes depend on minute-to-minute responsiveness, employers have reported disruption and dramatic cost impact.  The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Caldwell v. Holland of Texas that employers could be held liable for FMLA violations even if the employee does not comply with notification requirements.  Employers who discharge an employee when FMLA might be involved may be liable.  Thus, every time an employee is fired firms must spend time and money to investigate potential FMLA violations. Uncertainty raises costs.

Health Care Law an FMLA Redux

Much like the debate concerning the FMLA, left-wing academics, attorneys, economists and the legacy media filled the recent health reform debate with promises of improved efficiencies and reduced costs.  For example, in an August 12, 2009 editorial The New York Times promised that small business would "reap substantial benefits" if only health care reform were passed.  Healthier work forces would enable small business to attract and retain talented workers.  Insurance rates would fall.  Yet, as the two health care laws, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act go into effect, The Times's David Brooks writes that because employers are likely to dump the worst risks onto the insurance exchanges the exchanges’ costs might be three times as great as the Congressional Budget Office projected, as much as $1.4 trillion, and "the price of the health care law could double."  

Costs Do Not Decline

The Website of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports a High Roads, Inc. survey that finds that 25 percent of employers say that there is insufficient federal guidance as to what they need to communicate to employees concerning the new health care law.  Another survey by Price Waterhouse Coopers finds that Employers are raising deductibles and that healthcare costs for 2011 are expected to increase by nine percent, six times the inflation rate.  Much of the cost increase is due to Medicare's dumping costs onto employers.  Medicare is reducing hospital payment rates and more than 40 percent of employers aim to increase employee contributions and increase medical cost sharing.  

Costs Imposed on Small Employers

Lisa Horn, SHRM's government affairs director pointed out in May 2010 that key issues of health reform are the elimination of pre-existing conditions restrictions and tax penalties for people who chose not to be covered and employers who do not offer health coverage. Employers with over 50 employees who do not offer coverage will have to pay a fine of $3,000 per employee if at least one employee receives a government subsidy and if the employer does not contribute at least 60 percent of the employee's cost. Employers must offer "free choice vouchers" to employees to purchase insurance on government-enforced exchanges.  Employers with 200 employees must automatically enroll employees. The value of health benefits must be reported on W-2s. Generous benefit plans that cost over $10,200 for an individual will have to pay a 40 percent excise tax. The law requires break time for female employees to express breast milk at work for their nursing children.  Human resource managers are scrambling to figure out how to do this. 

Bureaucracy Runs Wild

Much like the FMLA, academics and legacy journalists argued strenuously for the health care law but did not consider  the bureaucratic complexity with which the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress were about to hamstring the US economy.  A professor of social services, Harold Pollack, circulated a letter in favor of the Obama health care plan in early 2010.  Numerous left-wing academics signed it.  But few of them will suffer from declining job opportunities and the shrinking economy that will result from the explosion in health care bureaucracy. 

In May 2010 SHRM's Lisa Horn described the health reform laws as "complicated."  On January 4, 2011 SHRM reported about the government's publication of "frequently asked questions". FAQs involved automatic enrollment, dependent coverage of children to age 26, standards for summaries of benefits, grandfathered health plans and the exemption of employers with fewer than 50 employees.  SHRM notes that the health reform laws will require that firms re-write their policies and employment manuals multiple times through 2014. Experts anticipate significant employee relations issues.  

There will be plenty of bureaucratic work and costs for left-wing lawyers and benefit managers.  The American economy will become ever less innovative at the same time.  And as the economy becomes less innovative, the average American's real wage will continue to stagnate.

*Mitchell Langbert is associate professor at Brooklyn College-CUNY. He blogs at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com